The Breathing Sea II - Drowning

by E. P. Clark

  “Can sorceresses do that, Tsarinovna?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dasha told her. “I’ve never seen one try and fail.” She didn’t know why she was being so difficult. No, that wasn’t true. She did. She knew that Vlastomila Serafimiyevna was telling her the truth, a truth that she didn’t want to acknowledge, because she was scared that if she did, things would change. She would change. So she was arguing against this obvious truth in order to hide from what it would bring, even though it was offering her what she wanted more than anything else: a way to control her gift. Only Vlastomila Serafimiyevna seemed to be saying that rather than controlling it, rather than guiding it as a captain guided her boat, she would have to surrender to it. As a captain would let the wind and current and tide carry her ship, a tiny hollow thing bobbing on the surface of forces much greater than she would ever be.

  “Close your eyes, Tsarinovna,” commanded Vlastomila Serafimiyevna.

  Dasha had to blink a few times before she could bring herself to close her eyes and keep them closed.

  “What do you sense, Tsarinovna?” asked Vlastomila Serafimiyevna, once she had managed to keep her eyes firmly shut.

  “Ah…I can feel you holding my hands. I can sense the stool, and the table. I can smell the wood, and the wool of my robe.”

  “Good. Very good. Let yourself feel my hands. Don’t force yourself to think about them, just allow yourself to feel them. Every time you find yourself thinking of something else, allow your mind to return to the feel of my hands.”

  They did this for what seemed to Dasha to be a very long time. It was surprisingly difficult to keep her mind from wandering off and thinking about other things, like how Oleg and the guards were doing, and Pyatnyshki and Poloska, and what was happening in Lesnograd, and where her mother was, had she set off already for Pristanograd, who was going with her, what was going to happen…hands, she was supposed to be thinking about hands. Her own hands were starting to sweat. Like when she had sweated so much after she had taken in Vika. How old was Vika? What would happen to her and the other water-maidens after Dasha did what she was planning to do? What happened to spirits after they died? Could spirits die? What about…hands. Her hands were really very sweaty. Tingles were spreading up her arms, as if she were about to… “AKH!” cried Dasha, and twitched all over. Her eyes flew open.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had a fit.”

  “Look, Tsarinovna,” said Vlastomila Serafimiyevna, pointing down at the table. Dasha’s eyes followed her finger. A small spark was burning on the tabletop.

  “Oh no!” cried Dasha. She reached out to slap it out of existence, and then stopped, her hand hovering over it, suddenly afraid of the burn it would give her.

  “It is nothing to worry about, Tsarinovna. It will leave nothing worse than a small scar, and of those, I assure you, the table has plenty already. But do not be afraid. You lit it, and you can put it out. It is a part of you. Hold out your hand and let it return to you.”

  “It’s fire! I can’t just…it needs to be put out!”

  “Hold out your finger, Tsarinovna. Yes, just like that. See the reflection of the flame, dancing on your nail. Watch it, allow your mind to settle on it. Whenever it tries to flee to other thoughts, allow it to return to that flame, dancing on the tip of your finger.”

  “We need to put out the real flame!”

  “We will, Tsarinovna, we will. Allow your mind to turn to the flame before it, the one that is on the tip of your finger. Think of them as merging; they are already one, after all. Allow them to come together…”

  Dasha gasped. There was a sudden warm tingle on the top of her finger, and then the flame on the table winked out.

  “Very good, Tsarinovna,” said Vlastomila Serafimiyevna. “You are doing very well. Now the candle.” She held her hand over the candle until it blossomed into light again. “Allow yourself to become one with the flame. It is already reflected in your eyes. Allow your eyes to see it, and whenever they turn away, allow them to return.”

  So went the rest of the day. Just before the midday meal, Dasha extinguished the candle flame, and sometime after that, she lit it. By the end of the day she had twice managed to bring forth a few flickering flames on her fingertips, which shimmered, barely more than sparks, for an instant against her flesh before winking out.

  “I’m still not very good at it all,” she said in frustration, after the flames went dark for the second time and refused to return.

  “You have only been doing it for one day, Tsarinovna,” said Vlastomila Serafimiyevna. “I would say you are doing very well.”

  “But I should be better at it! It’s my native gift.”

  “But you are not better at it. You are exactly as good at it as you are, Tsarinovna. If you are to become better at it, it will take constant practice, just like anything else. Do not become discouraged, just because your fantasies of becoming proficient in the blink of an eye have not come to pass. They never do. Come.” She rose. “It is time for supper.”

  “And then I want to speak with the water-maidens.”

  “You still intend to go through with this, Tsarinovna? Even though you are not as good at fire-summoning as you think you should be?”

  “Yes. I would have gone through with it even if I hadn’t made any progress at all. I need to do it. And besides—my magic always seems to come through for me when I really need it.” She grinned at Vlastomila Serafimiyevna. “Call it faith.”

  Vlastomila Serafimiyevna smiled back. “As you will, Tsarinovna. If you have faith, who am I to question it? I will be by your side. Now come: it is time to eat.” They stacked the stools on top of the little table (which was rather the worse for the wear after Dasha’s experiments, despite what Vlastomila Serafimiyevna said), and left.

  ***

  After supper, Dasha asked Vlastomila Serafimiyevna if she could have some paper or birch bark and ink, in order to write down the water-maidens’ stories.

  “Let me come with you, Tsarinovna, and be your scribe,” said Sister Yeseniya.

  “It could be dangerous,” said both Dasha and Vlastomila Serafimiyevna together.

  “I know, but I want to come anyway.”

  “And I,” said Sister Bozheslava. “I should be the one to see this through, too.”

  So it was that they were a party of four as they headed out to the garden. It was still only twilight outside, as it would be for some time longer. Soon, Vlastomila Serafimiyevna told Dasha, in another week or so, the sun would cease setting at all, and not go down for the better part of a month. They would not know true darkness till the end of summer, in Harvestmoon. Tonight’s twilight was even brighter than usual because of the almost-full moon that was rising above them, looking down at them through the clearing from a perfectly clear sky.

  “I hope the water-maidens can come out tonight,” Dasha said. “I hope it isn’t too dry.”

  But when they came to the garden, mist was already gathering and pooling in its far corner. Not as thick as the night before, but still visible. Sister Yeseniya and Sister Bozheslava both halted at the sight, and even Vlastomila Serafimiyevna hesitated for a moment.

  “There is nothing to fear,” Dasha said, continuing to move towards the mist. The others hurried to catch up.

  By the time they had reached the bottom corner of the garden, where the cabbage was planted, the mist had formed into five distinct figures.

  You came for us, said the one in front.

  “Anya!” cried Sister Bozheslava.

  “Is she the one who lived here?” Dasha whispered to Vlastomila Serafimiyevna.

  Vlastomila Serafimiyevna nodded.

  “Then where is her sister?”

  Here. A second figure stepped forward, almost identical to the first. The two joined hands.

  “I am here to help you,” Dasha told them. “To give you what you want. A chance to tell your stories. To be heard and believed, as no one would hear and believe you in life. We will take it all d
own, and send your stories back to your home villages, so that all your kin may know the truth.”

  That will not give us our lives back, said Anya.

  “No. Nothing can do that, not in the way you mean. But it will give you something. It will give those who knew you, or knew of you, the true story of your lives. It will give the memory of your lives back to those who hold them. It will give you a kind of life you never would have had otherwise. On this.” Dasha took the blank scroll Sister Yeseniya was carrying, and held it up, showing it to the misty, translucent figures before her.

  Marks on paper are not the same as life. They are not the same as justice.

  “They are a different kind of life. A kind that makes you alive for others, even if you are not for yourself. It is the best that many of us can hope for. And it is justice. They are the greatest justice there is, because they can tell the truth. If you have your vengeance on those who did this to you, what then? Life will mete out justice to them anyway, as it does to all of us. None of us can escape her harsh justice. None of us can evade the headswoman she will send for us in the end. But these marks on paper—they can outlast any headswoman. They can set down the truth for anyone to see it, and they will keep delivering justice, kept telling the truth, long after those who spoke the words, and those who took them down, are gone.”

  I don’t know…

  Tell my story, said a water-maiden who had been hanging back until now. She pushed forward to the front of the group. I grow tired of this half-life, waiting for a justice that will never come. Tell my story.

  “Then tell it to us,” said Dasha.

  It took some time for the water-maiden, who said her name was Katya, to gather her thoughts and lay them out in coherent form. She was old, at least, Dasha gathered, a hundred years old. She had taken a young man who was betrothed to another as a lover, and when she had informed him she was with child, he had pushed her off a high bank into the river, and then claimed that she had slipped while chasing a runaway goat. She had watched him marry his betrothed, and waited until the girl was with child, before luring her off that same high bank and into the water, only to see her swim to shore and pull herself out into her husband’s arms. Katya had tried the same trick with their first-born daughter, only to see her climb to freedom and safety as well. After that the villagers shunned that high bank, and Katya had sat there for generations, watching everyone she knew pass away, replaced by their children and grandchildren, before she had felt the call to come to the sanctuary, and had dragged herself, growing so weak she could barely move, to the sanctuary, where she had waited with the others, hoping that the sisters could help them, as no one had been able to help them, in life or in death.

  Ariadna and I will tell our story, announced Anya, when Katya was done.

  Ariadna’s story was much the same as Lyubomila’s. She had been raped by their stepfather, and when she complained to her mother of it, she was driven out of the house, where she took refuge with their aunt. When she discovered she was with child, she returned, planning to demand that they help pay an herbwoman for a dose of moldy rye. Only it was just her stepfather at home when she arrived, and he threw her into the washing pool and held her down till the water filled her lungs. Anya guessed the truth, but her mother refused to hear it, and so Anya ran off to the sanctuary, followed by Ariadna, until she drowned herself and joined her sister.

  The next to tell her story was Rinochka, who had also been drowned by her lover when she told him she was with child. He, she said, was still alive, and had married the daughter of the village headwoman. Dasha promised that he, like Anya and Ariadna’s stepfather, would be brought to justice, in Krasnograd if the people of his village refused to judge him.

  My story is different, said the last water-maiden. She was the faintest and the smallest, looking more like a little girl than a young woman, and her form wavered and seemed constantly on the edge of dissolving entirely. It was not a lover who killed me. It was my mother.

  Everyone, even the other water-maidens, sucked in a shocked breath.

  I was her last daughter, she said. She had already had three before she had me, and two sons besides. She did not want another child. And who can blame her? She was already worn out, and there was no food to feed us. And there was little love between her and my father by then. But still I appeared. She wanted to take moldy rye to prevent it, but my father begged her otherwise, and against her judgment, she listened to him. But then he fell ill when I was born, and was little help in caring for me. He died before I reached my first birthday. My mother always swore I was a curse and a burden, and I had killed him, I was the one who made him sicken and die, I sucked the life out of everyone around me. One day, during my twelfth summer, I told her that my moonblood had come. She fell into a fit of rage, and screamed and screamed, saying now there would be more laundry, now there would be more laundry. She made me fetch the water and heat it to do the washing, even though it was not washing-day. And then, as we stood side-by-side, putting the dirty clothes into the steaming water, I groaned and cried out from the pains that struck me, and she screamed too, screamed that it was more than anyone could bear, and she pushed me into the steaming water.

  No one said anything for a moment.

  “What happened to her?” Dasha asked.

  Nothing. She said I had tripped and fallen into the scalding water, and everyone believed her. There was not much love for me in our village.

  “How long ago was this?” asked Dasha.

  I have lost count of the summers, but my sisters’ grandchildren are already old and gray.

  “Where is your village? So that we can tell them.”

  It is called Klyucheyevo. To the East of Lesnogorod.

  “I know it,” said Vlastomila Serafimiyevna. “A small, poor village, even though it is located on a good spring of sweet water. Your story will be taken there, and given to your sisters’ grandchildren, and everyone else in the village.”

  I am glad. No, I am sorry. Sorry that it will cause them sorrow to hear my story. But my thirst for vengeance—my thirst for vengeance will be quenched by this truth-telling. Sharing our truths will be more vengeance than anything else we could devise. And now for the second part of your plan.

  “I’m sorry?” said Dasha.

  You never meant to let us go free from here, did you? Once you took our stories, you always meant to destroy us, did you not?

  “I…” Dasha’s voice cracked. “‘Destroy’ is not how I would put it…”

  It does not matter. The little water-maiden held out her hands. Do what you meant to do. It is time.

  “I…” Dasha had to clear her throat. “I don’t think it will hurt.”

  I have died of steam before. That hurt. But the pain faded in time. This will too. Come. Do what you will.

  Dasha stepped forward and placed her hands on the little water-maiden’s misty ones. For a moment nothing happened, and a pang of fear shot through Dasha. What if she could not control her gift, just when she needed it most? But then she remembered what had happened to the little water-maiden standing before her. Sparks appeared on her hands, and then blossomed into tongues of flame, rising up through the little water-maiden’s ghostly hands.

  It does not hurt, said the little water-maiden.

  “I am glad,” Dasha said. “Perhaps it is what is meant to be. You are becoming what you were always meant to be.”

  The little water-maiden opened her mouth to say something more, but her face was already breaking up into individual wisps and dissipating into steam. Before she could get the words out, she was gone. Gone—except that Dasha could feel her memories in her own mind, not painfully, not as an invasion, but more as if someone had given her this story to keep and hold.

  “She is within me,” Dasha said to the others. “She is gone—but she also left a bit of herself with me. She is not gone entirely. Just at peace.”

  There was a collective sigh from the other water-maidens, filling the air around th
em with a fine haze. Me, please, said Rinochka, stepping forward. I will go next.

  Dasha held out her hands. Rinochka took them in her own. She was smiling, her eyes shining in the moonlight, or perhaps like the moonlight, and Dasha could see how a lover could lose his head over her—although not how he could have pushed her away, let alone killed her. But now, even with the drops of water falling from her tangled hair, the constant reminder of her drowning, she looked radiant with joy.

  I am glad we will be together, Tsarinovna, she said.

  “As am I,” Dasha told her, and let the flames come to her. This time they leapt to life on her hands in a heartbeat, and a heartbeat later Rinochka was gone, leaving behind nothing but faint, joy-filled memories in Dasha’s heart.

  I will do it, announced Katya, stepping forward. I am tired of this non-life. All my attempts at vengeance ended in vain. I would take this other vengeance instead.

  “Then take my hands,” said Dasha. Katya stepped forward, and a moment later, she was gone too, her sorrowful memories lodged next to Rinochka’s joyful ones, the sorrow and the joy already mingling together.

  We will go together, said Anya, after sharing a glance with Ariadna. We came into the world together, and we will leave it together, and our memories will ride side-by-side in your heart. They both stepped forward, hands clasped, and each took one of Dasha’s hands in their free hands, so that the three of them formed a circle. When the flames from Dasha’s hands began to lick at their hands and turn them to steam, they gripped their clasped hands more tightly, and turned to each other, smiling. The last part of them to disappear was their two clasped hands, which lingered for a moment after everything else of them was gone, before rising up as a wisp of steam into the moonlight.

  “Well,” said Sister Yeseniya, after a long pause. “That’s it, then.”

  “Not quite,” said Dasha. “Vika, come out.”

  No!

  “You knew this moment would come, Vika. It is time.”